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Supermind
and Mind of Light
The
essential character of Supermind is a Truth-consciousness
which knows by its own inherent right of nature, by its own
light: it has not to arrive at knowledge but possesses it.
It may indeed, especially in its evolutionary action, keep
knowledge behind its apparent consciousness and bring it forward
as if from behind the veil; but even then this veil is only
an appearance and does not really exist: the knowledge was
always there, the consciousness its possessor and present
revealer. This too is only in the evolutionary play and on
the supramental plane itself the consciousness lives always
in an immediacy of knowledge and acts by a direct immediacy
of knowledge. In Mind as we see it here the action is very
different; it starts from an apparent absence of knowledge,
a seeming ignorance or nescience, even, in material Nature,
from an inconscience in which any kind of knowing does not
seem at all to exist. It reaches knowledge or the action of
knowledge by steps which are not at all immediate but rather
knowledge at first seems utterly impossible and foreign to
the very substance of this Matter. Yet, in the blindness of
Matter itself there are signs of a concealed consciousness
which in its hidden fundamental being sees and has the power
to act according to its vision and even by an infallible immediacy
which is inherent in its nature. This is the same Truth that
is apparent in Supermind but is here involved and seems not
to be. The Mind of Light is a subordinate action of Supermind,
dependent upon it even when not apparently springing direct
from it, in which the secret of this connection becomes evident
and palpable.
The
Truth-consciousness is not only a power of knowledge; it is
a being of consciousness and knowledge, a luminous many-sided
dynamis and play of the omniscient Spirit; in it there can
be a spiritual feeling, a spiritual sensation, a spiritual
essentiality of substance that knows and reveals, that acts
and manifests in an omniscience which is one with omnipotence.
In Mind this Truth-consciousness and these workings of the
Truth-consciousness can be there and even though it limits
itself in Mind and has a subordinate or an indirect working,
its action can be essentially the same. There can even be
a hidden immediacy which hints at the presence of something
absolute and is evidence of the same omnipotence and omniscience.
In the Mind of Light when it becomes full-orbed this character
of the Truth reveals itself, though in a garb that is transparent
even when it seems to cover: for this too is a truth-consciousness
and a self-power of knowledge. This too proceeds from the
Supermind and depends upon it even though it is limited and
subordinate. What we have called specifically the Mind of
Light is indeed the last of a series of descending planes
of consciousness in which the Supermind veils itself by a
self-chosen limitation or modification of its self-manifesting
activities, but its essential character remains the same:
there is in it an action of light, of truth, of knowledge
in which inconscience, ignorance and error claim no place.
It proceeds from knowledge to knowledge; we have not yet crossed
over the borders of the truth-conscious into ignorance. The
methods also are those of a self-luminous knowing and seeing
and feeling and a self-fulfilling action within its own borders;
there is no need to seek for something missing, no fumbling,
no hesitation: all is still a gnostic action of a gnostic
power and principle. There has been a descent from full Supermind
into Mind, but this Mind though a self-limited is not yet
an agnostic consciousness unsure of itself or unsure of its
workings; there is still a comprehending or an apprehending
consciousness which goes straight to its object and does not
miss its mark or have to hunt for it in the dark or in insufficient
light: it sees, knows, puts its hand immediately on things
of self and things of Nature. We have passed into Mind but
Mind has still not broken its inherent connection with the
supramental principle.
Still
there is an increasing self-limitation which begins even with
Overmind: Overmind is separated by only a luminous border
from the full light and power of the supramental Truth and
it still commands direct access to all that Supermind can
give it. There is a further limitation or change of characteristic
action at each step downwards from Overmind to Intuition,
from Intuition to Illumined Mind, from Illumined Mind to what
I have called the Higher Mind: the Mind of Light is a transitional
passage by which we can pass from supermind and superhumanity
to an illumined humanity. For the new humanity will be capable
of at least a partly divinised way of seeing and living because
it will live in the light and in knowledge and not in the
obscuration of the Ignorance.
Still,
again there will be a difference between the superhuman and
the human, a difference in nature and power but a difference
especially in the access and way of admission to the Truth-consciousness
and its activities: there may indeed be two orders of its
truth, direct and half-direct, immediate and near or even
only a reception at a distance. But this we must consider
afterwards; at present it is sufficient to mark certain differences
in the descending order of gnostic mind which culminates here.
We may say that there is a higher hemisphere of our being
in which Mind, luminous and aware of its workings, still lives
in the Light and can be seen as a subordinate power of the
Supermind; it is still an agent of the Truth-consciousness,
a gnostic power that has not descended into the mental ignorance;
it is capable of a mental gnosis that preserves its connection
with the superior light and acts by its power. This is the
character of Overmind in its own plane and of all the powers
that are dependent on the Overmind: the Supermind works there
but at one remove as if in something that it has put forth
from itself but which is no longer entirely itself but is
still a delegate of the Truth and invested with its authority.
We are moving towards a transitional border beyond which lies
the possibility of the Ignorance, but the Ignorance is not
yet here. In the order of the evolutionary descent we stand
in the Mind of Light on that border and a step downward can
carry us beyond it into the beginnings of an ignorance which
still bears on its face something of the luminosity that it
is leaving behind it. On the other hand, in the ascending
order of the evolution we reach a transition in which we see
the light, are turned towards it, reflect it in our consciousness
and one further step carries us into the domain of the Light.
TheTruth becomes visible and audible to us and we are in immediate
communication with its messages and illuminations and can
grow into it and be made one with its substance. Thus there
is a succession of ranges of consciousness which we can speak
of as Mind but which belongs practically to the higher hemisphere,
although in their ontological station they are within the
domain of the lower hemisphere. For the whole of being is
a connected totality and there is in it no abrupt passage
from the principle of Truth and Light into their opposite.
The creative truth of things works and can work infallibly
even in the Inconscient: the Spirit is there in Matter and
it has made a series of steps by which it can travel from
it to its own heights in an uninterrupted line of gradations;
the depths are linked to the heights and the Law of the one
Truth creates and works everywhere.
Even
in the material world which seems to us a world of ignorance,
a world of the workings of a blind and inconscient Force starting
from inconscience and proceeding through ignorance and reaching
with difficulty towards an imperfect Light and Knowledge,
there is still a secret Truth in things which arranges all,
guides towards the Self many contrary powers of being and
rises towards its own heights where it can manifest its own
highest truth and fulfil the secret purpose of the universe.
Even this material world of existence is built upon a pattern
of the truth in things which we call Law of Nature, a truth
from which we climb to a greater truth until we emerge in
the Light of the Supreme. This world is not really created
by a blind force of Nature: even in the Inconscient the presence
of the supreme Truth is at work; there is a seeing Power behind
it which acts infallibly and the steps of the Ignorance itself
are guided even when they seem to stumble; for what we call
the Ignorance is a cloaked Knowledge, a Knowledge at work
in a body not its own but moving towards its own supreme self-discovery.
This Knowledge is the covert Supermind which is the support
of the creation and is leading all towards itself and guides
behind this multitude of minds and creatures and objects which
seem each to be following its own law of nature; in this vast
and apparently confused mass of existence there is a law,
a one truth of being, a guiding and fulfilling purpose of
the world-existence. The Supermind is veiled here and does
not work according to its characteristic law of being and
self-knowledge, but without it nothing could reach its aim.
A world governed by an ignorant mind would soon drift into
a chaos; it could not in fact come into existence or remain
in existence unless supported by the secret Omniscience of
which it is the cover; a world governed by a blind inconscient
force might repeat constantly the same mechanical workings
but it would mean nothing and arrive nowhere. This could not
be the cause of an evolution that creates life out of Matter,
out of life mind, and a gradation of planes of Matter, Life
and Mind culminating in the emergence of Supermind. The secret
truth that emerges in Supermind has been there all the time,
but now it manifests itself and the truth in things and the
meaning of our existence.
It
is in this series of the order of existence and as the last
word of the lower hemisphere of being, the first word of the
higher hemisphere that we have to look at the Mind of Light
and see what is its nature and the powers which characterise
it and which it uses for its self-manifestation and workings,
its connection with Supermind and its consequences and possibilities
for the life of a new humanity.
-
Sri Aurobindo
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